28 July 2010
27 July 2010
a PAX on the OCA
Let us bring the gifts that differ
And, in splendid, varied ways,
Sing a new Church into being,
One in faith and love and praise
or this splendid ditty:
We are called, we are chosen.
We are Christ for one another.
We are promise to tomorrow,
while we are for him today.
We are sign, we are wonder,
we are sower, we are seed.
We are harvest, we are hunger.
We are question, we are creed.
Hopefully parishes in the OCA will find more beneficial dialogue opportunities with Catholics. Perhaps we might even discuss faith matters with some of those Catholics who do not follow the Ritus Narcissus. But when ecumenism ranks higher as a matter of faith than, say, dogma, or worship which might be recognized by Christians who lived prior to 1970, then the farm has already been sold. Lord, have mercy.
In the last 12 months we have learned of an American Orthodox parish offering Evangelical praise&worship services, and now one which houses the scary clown Mass set. We are hitting all targets, it seems.

My wife says she long suspected I came from bad blood.
26 July 2010
23 July 2010
21 July 2010
on Marah, the salt of the earth.

LOT’S WIFE
And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound…
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
- Anna Akhmatova
- from this excellent post by Margaret, which offers her conversion story, of sorts.
The Turning of Lot's WifeAs the sun rose upon the earth and Lot entered Zoar, the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulfurous fire from the Lord out of heaven. He annihilated those cities and the entire Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities and the vegetation of the ground. Lot's wife looked back, and she thereupon turned into a pillar of salt.
- Genesis 19:23-26
First of all, she had a name, and she had a history. She was Marah, and long before the breath of death's angel turned her to bitter dust, she had slipped from her mother's womb with remarkable ease, had moved in due time from infancy to womanhood with a manner of grace that came to be the sole blessing of her aging parents. She was beloved.
And like most daughters who are beloved by a mother and a father, Marah moved about her city with unflinching compassion, tending to the dispossessed as if they were her own. And they became her own. In a city given to all species of excess, there wer
e a great many in agony - abandoned men, abandoned women, abandoned children. Upon these she poured out her substance and her care.
Her first taste of despair was at the directive of the messengers, who announced without apparent sentiment what was to come, and what was to be done. With surprising banality, they stood and spoke. One coughed dryly into his fist and would not meet her eyes. And one took a sip from the cup she offered before he handed it back and the two disappeared into the night.
Unlike her husband - coward and sycophant - the woman remained faithful unto death. For even as the man fled the horrors of a city's conflagration, outrunning Marah and both girls as they all rushed into the desert, the woman stopped. She looked ahead briefly to the flat expanse, seeing her tall daughters, whose strong legs and churning arms were taking them safely to the hills; she saw, farther ahead, the old man whom she had served and comforted for twenty years. In the impossible interval where she stood, Marah saw that she could not turn her back on even one doomed child of the city, but must turn her back instead upon the saved.
Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. - Matthew 5:13
Father Jonathan asked us to consider Jesus' baptism. Consider who Jesus is. We know that He is fully God. We know that He is rightly called prophet, priest, and king. We know that He not only represents, but in a certain sense is the true and holy Israel of God. It should not be lost on us that God's people are now called "the Body of Christ." This Man who is God walks up to the River Jordan. And what happens? What should we expect to happen? Well, a man who is versed in the Old Testament and who also knows Who this Jesus is might have a very reasonable expectation. In the Old Testament when the people of God, the Israel of God, come up to the waters while running from pharaoh, the waters part. In the OT when the prophet of God comes up to the river Jordan, the waters part. In the OT when the ark of the covenant, which was God present to His people, came to the river Jordan, the waters part. This man well versed in the OT, when seeing Jesus come to the waters should have every expectation that they too will part. Jesus is the fullness of the presence of God, He is the fulfillment of all prophecy, He is the true Israel of God, all people of God are in Him. But the waters do not part. Instead, God enters into the chaos and death of the water, and He is covered. With Christ, all bets are off, the rules of the game have changed. God is now not seeking a people for whom to part waters. He is seeking a community of the drowned.
When you enter through baptism and chrismation the Orthodox faith, and are therefore baptized into Christ, do not think that God is in the business of going about separating waters for you. No, this is not the path you have chosen. You have chosen to hold fast to the One for whom the waters do not part. You die with Him, in Him, through Him, as Him, for Him. Orthodox Christianity is the exact opposite of "health and wealth" spiritual economics, which infects not just Pentecostalism, but much of American Christianity. God will heal whom He will, God will allow the deaths of those whom He will, but in a real and certain sense, friends of God, as those who are the dead in Christ, you have given up any right to claim that God must part waters for you. As Bonhoeffer said, "when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." A dead man can claim nothing as his own.
The mystery takes us further. That day not only does Jesus come up to the water and the waters stay still to swallow Him up, but it is this very day that for the first time God reveals Himself in His fullness: Father, Son, Holy Spirit to humankind. The threefold nature of the Godhead is revealed to us at the moment in which God reveals Himself as the God for Whom the waters do not part. In the feast of Theophany we learn that God reveals Himself formally and most clearly in the very midst of human suffering. Indeed, we may even speak with St. Cyril of this mystery of the suffering of the impassible God.
Throughout Christian history so many faithful have been led to seek some sort of magic help potion from God or his agents, or at the very least thought that God would give them a statistical advantage, as if they were a bit more likely to have things go well if God were in their corner. Both are lies. Of course we pray that God bless us, and we have faith that he will. But we may seek blessing in a different spirit when the waters have already passed over our heads. Most Holy Theotokos, joy of all who sorrow, pray for us.
I had never heard anything like this before.
In another homily Fr. Jonathan was dealing with the Gospel reading concerning the healing of the lame man by Jesus at the Pool of Siloam in John chapter 5. Fr. Jonathan spoke of recent archeological evidence which suggested that the Pool of Siloam is the very place where there was an ancient water shaft - perhaps the water shaft used by David and his men when they took Jerusalem from the Jebusites. The Jebusites had mocked David saying that their defenses were such that even the lame and blind could defend the city against him, and when David entered the city through the water shaft he killed the lame and the blind. In those very waters (perhaps) Jesus, Himself in John 5 having just entered Jerusalem, heals a lame man. Again, with Christ, all bets are off, the rules of the game have changed. Fr. Jonathan does not espouse a Marcionism here, he simply asserts that when the veil comes off we see things very differently. Whether or not the archeology supports the precise connection is somewhat irrelevant - we see that when Jesus and David come into Jerusalem there are salvations of different sorts brought about by way of water, and quite different signs of the Kingdom vis-à-vis the lame and the blind. With David, the lame and blind are the first to be killed, with Christ, the lame and the blind are the first to be saved.
In another homily of Fr. Jonathan's, sent to me on cassette (these cassettes are among my most prized possessions) by Benjamin, Fr. Jonathan, preaching on the widow of Nain (Luke 7), compares the widow of Nain to the Church in the world, seen by those outside her as in desperate, pathetic shape because of a (in the case of the Church, presumed to be) dead son. If we are honest, we spend much of our lives walking through this life as if in a dirge, with nothing long-lasting to claim for ourselves, with little hope, with a legacy of fear and trepidation. “Do not weep.” The Church is robust in its demand of a hope in the midst of spiritual and material realism - hope when despair seems the most sensible position. Our construct "Christianity" is diminished when it plays spiritual games and seeks to present the widow to the world as something she is not - the warrior or the businessman or the philosopher, etc. Actual little Christedness is hope wearing the form of sorrow. What an audacity in such a context - “Do not weep.”
In another homily which some of us have heard Fr. Jonathan give time and again over the years, on the Publican and the Pharisee, Fr. Jonathan defends the Pharisee in his sermon. It is done in the manner in which a priest might defend someone who has given their confession before the icon of Christ - the priest standing before God and pleading to God that God remember the limitedness of our lives, that we often must go with what we've got, that we have tried with the resources available to us, and as the sermon progresses the magic of it, more than any other sermon I have heard on the topic, is that the hearer is made so fully aware that he is the Pharisee (many sermons on this topic assert as much, but I have never encountered another sermon on this topic which induces an intuition of as much, and as I have talked to a number of others about this sermon, I am convinced my experience with it is not unique). When I think of that sermon I am reminded that the Marco's of this world will walk away from God justified, while I am busy scraping for another angle by which to posture myself.
It is with these sermons in mind that I consider these poems on Marah. In Christ, I do not think it is always so simple as a turning away from God which results in what seems a rather petty wrath. Could her image not be what is suggested here by Akhmatova and Cairns? The image of a woman whose concern and love becomes a sign of a small mercy - one small spot on the plain where her salt preserves the soil from the mechanisms of violence and the self-destruction that almost always reigns in human affairs? Could she not be a feminine counterpoint to the wandering patriarchs that wandered with and sometimes against God? One who looks back, who faithfully and lovingly keeps her heart centered in her place even when that place is brutal? Could it be that the salt of the earth are those who sometimes turn in love even toward that which is not supposed to be loved, at least according to our various rote theological and moral constructs? Is Marah an icon which stands against petty triumphalisms and easy appeals to wrath and justice? Could it be that Marah's pillar of salt, when read as hidden with Christ in God, is no less an image of salvation than Jacob limping out of Peniel?
I'm not sure. But I know I have heard these sorts of thoughts before. There is an Orthodox posture with regard to Scripture which can often be loosely talmudicish, so to speak. Instead of formal Tannaic and Amoraic positions we have this tension with the texts that paradoxically knows what to do with them because of Christ, and in a sense doesn't know what to do with them because of Christ - the image of Christ crucified, died, and risen is such a complete image, is such an end of all hermeneutic structures save itself, that meaning is often left grasping and rambling. What seems clear is that the rules of the game have changed, and in Christ the thing you used to think was your damnation is the very thing that saves you. By Marah's prayers, perhaps.
* -- icon, Lot Forefather, written by Lasha Kintsurashvili. This icon depicts Righteous Lot watering the tree which he planted, which according to church tradition, was the tree the Cross was made from. There is a Georgian Monastery in Jerusalem dedicated to the Holy Cross on the site of this ancient tree.
19 July 2010
15 July 2010
metalshop theology, or, again, this is the world as best as i can remember it, or, the america of the heart....
One year and 8 months after being laid off, my old shop called me back to work. I am now there for 20-25 hours a week, working as a coppersmith again, helping with custom and prototype work. When I got the call I was not exactly thrilled. I am taking a semester's worth of courses this summer, I watch three small domestic terrorists when my wife is as work, I have a lot of paperwork to do in an almost certainly fruitless effort to get some Obama money to pay for this, that, and the other when I start nursing clinicals in the Fall, and, perhaps most of all, the brief period of time I will be working (about 4 months in total) is during the hottest time of the year. Today it was 105 degrees at my soldering table. Soldering furnaces and the smith's forges in a metal building in a particularly humid Memphis summer make the soul melt.
But all in all, I am glad to be back. The circumstances are perfect. I'm not the foreman anymore, and a part-time temporary coppersmith doesn't have to worry in the slightest about the owner's latest temper-tantrum. I don't have to talk to customers anymore, or salesmen, and only once since coming back have I had to talk to a designer. Not having to deal with the wealthy people we make lanterns for makes the making of lanterns that much more pleasurable.
This past Saturday I had to cut some plexiglas for a nibble pattern. This involved me going over to the woodshop area of the shop. It is in a leg of the shop, towards the back, that is dark and poorly ventilated, with low ceilings. Even now that it has much less in it than it used to I feel a bit claustrophobic and crammed in when I walk over there. It is where the coppersmith department was when I first started working here. The workers routinely described it as a dungeon - freezing cold in the winter, unbearably hot in the summer - with permanent clouds of lead and copper dust mixed with flux vapor. It looked and sounded something like a Tom Waits video - one of the more weird ones. The folks who worked there looked the part as well. I remember saying to myself, upon first walking back there, that I would give myself three months, and then we would move back to MN. 3 months somehow turned into 75 before I was laid off. After my first few years there the coppersmiths would move from the dungeon to the much more spacious area they work today. At the time of the move we had 15 coppersmiths and coppersmith apprentices and a couple non-skill folks in the department. Today they are down to 4 old coppersmiths, and one ochlophobic part-timer. The amount of space they have now is surreal. I can't look at all the workstations without remembering the many faces and names which passed through there over the years. A lot of people think that they want to be a coppersmith. Coppersmith's apprentice sounds romantic, but most folks are not crazy enough, or simply can't work with their hands. When I think about this, I think about some of the Chesterton society members I knew in MN (which is kind of the HQ for the American Chesterton society, as President Dale is there). The hard-core Chestertonians I have known in life have generally shared one thing in common with Chesterton - a romantic view of forms of manual labor they are completely incapable of doing themselves.
The best part about going back to work has been catching up with old friends. I am certainly not sure of what human life is, but so far as I can tell it has something to do with the collecting of narratives. I am sure some of these stories I have told before, but these have been pressed on my mind again of late, and so I write:
G. I have mentioned him before on this blog. G. came to us fresh out of rehab, on methadone (for his heroin addiction). We tried him as a coppersmith and it didn't work out. As he readily admitted, he had trouble concentrating. We switched him over to the blacksmith's department, which was behind at the time, thinking we could use him for a few more weeks of grunt work and then let him go. But he did well over there. He asked me to get him into a blacksmithing class at the ornamental metal museum, and the company paid for it. One class was followed by another and another. He ended up staying on as a blacksmith's apprentice, which is where he was when I was laid off. Upon returning, G. told me he had been off methadone for over a year, and married the girlfriend he had been living with. He had recently run his first 5k. A few weeks after I came back to the shop, through an unusual series of events, the lead blacksmith was let go. G. was asked to take his place. I don't know that I have ever seen anyone master fabrication blacksmithing in that short a period of time. G. has an exceptional work ethic and is one of the nicest, most genuinely kind men you will ever meet.
G. grew up in a 'fundamentalist' Prot family in the rural midwest. He got the hell out of dodge as soon as he could, headed to Memphis to find the trouble he found; became a part of the Memphis punk scene. G. is short and skinny and his temperament is such that does not fit into the type A militaristic macho man world of certain types of rural American fundamentalist circles. He had no contact with his parents for years, so far as I know he still doesn't. He has a sister, a homeschooling (4 or 5 kids now) fundy Prot mom married to a fundy Prot pastor, who has kept in touch with G. When G. speaks of his family, he contrasts a world of harshness with the gentle love of his sister. For many years now he has gone back up to Illinois to spend a week with his sister. I would love to be a fly on the wall up there for that week. G. is gentle but a bit rough, he speaks and looks like a man who has slept in gutters and lived the punk life to its fullest. I imagine those nephews and nieces don't encounter the likes of G. at Sunday School. Of course, he also knows the rules of the world he goes back to. And his countenance has changed. His eyes are clear of the glaze.
A. and M. are brothers. A. was the first coppersmith I sat next to and worked with when I began with the company. He is one of the 4 remaining. Their father was a murderer who was himself murdered when their mother finally had had enough of the abuse. A. and M. are 2 of 17 siblings. I think 6 or 7 of them share their mother. Both men are near the age of 50 now. M. has a long scar on his face from a knife fight fought years ago. A. is the only black man I know who sings along to Elton John and Boy George and Cindy Lauper songs, word for word. When he isn't listening to 80s pop on the radio, he sings church music to himself. A. is always happy, excepting the time he and his wife, Stella, split up. One day he came into the shop and threw a bunch of things around, finally going outside to kick some trees and throw rocks at the metal roof of the building behind ours. The day after that he was his happy self again. When I came back this summer for part-time work, M. asked how I was doing. Both A. and M. follow a sort of folk Protestantism that is akin to the folk Catholicisms Arturo blogs about. There are "extra-ecclesial" rituals, and all of life is viewed as a sort of dark comedic mystery, with its magics and curses and blessings which can overcome some curses and so forth. Both A. and M. think that I am set apart in some fashion I do not entirely understand, because of my faith, and also because of the name I go by at work, a biblical name, which they are both fascinated with (both of them have biblical names; not all of their siblings do, and A. once told me that the ones with biblical names were the ones that made it - one of their non-biblical named brothers also worked at the shop, he once went to the doc on a workers comp claim insisting that the flux in the air was giving him rashes - the doc told him that flux cannot cause syphilis and the workman's comp claim was denied). I find this very interesting, because they know me as a man who drinks and cusses and gets as angered and frustrated as any other at work. They have always supported me, even when as foreman I certainly couldn't have been said to have always supported them. It is as if they always choose to see this better me, regardless of what happens to be appearing in front of them. As I was walking away from M. after our first conversation after my coming back this May, he asked me if I needed anything, knowing I'd been unemployed for a long while. This is a man who has not had the best ride this recession either, being laid off and coming back for stints off and on. But I am pretty sure that if I had said yes he would have gotten me what I said I needed, somehow, someway.
Thinking of their folk Protestantism reminds me, first and foremost, of the fool prophet Marco. Marco and his first cousin Mq (who still works at the shop) are the nephews of Tread (his actual name), who was a metal spinner when I first started. Tread was the one with the beautiful bass voice singing old spirituals each morning - before all the machines and fires were turned on and lit his voice resonated throughout the whole shop. Tread was a homosexual and a drug addict who found Jesus and went clean and chaste the last 8 or 9 years of his life. He died of AIDS a few years ago. I was at the wake (which for some reason was in the heart of South Memphis though Tread had lived in Frayser his whole life) for about an hour, during which time I was the only white person there (the wake lasted 6 or 7 hours I think). There were women in an ecstatic trance-like state in front of Tread's open coffin. His family poured all over me when I got there and began telling me of all the premonitions and signs of his death, and the signs of Tread having communicated with them through dreams and visions in the few days since he had died. We have a banner with his picture on it in the shop. Tread was a good man. Because of Tread Marco and Mq would end up coming to work in the shop.
Marco is the funniest man I have ever met in my life. In comedy, timing is everything, and Marco can time his facial expressions and voice perfectly. His face is large, and uniquely expressive, and his eyes bulge a bit, which Marco utilizes perfectly. During morning break for nearly a couple of years he would basically give us an original comedy routine on any and all matters for 15 minutes each day. Almost every day I cried from laughter. Marco always called me "Mathis", for reasons I never knew, which in Frayser dialect sounds a lot like the way black north Memphians pronounce "Memphis." My boss asked me several times why Marco always called me Memphis.
When I first started working there, as a coppersmith's apprentice I spent a lot of time each day on the big metal shears, blanking metal for orders. Marco, who was the junior spinner, was doing all of the blanking for the metal spinning department, so we had the opportunity to talk for hours each day. Once Marco learned that I had studied theology, he frequently wanted to talk about God. In the theology of Marco, he was living in hell, and in a state of constant argument with God. In the midst of this argument, he had the Patriarch Abraham on his side, and his dead grandmother, and Jesus when Marco was really in a pinch, all of whom occasionally interceded with God on Marco's behalf. Marco knew his Bible surprisingly well, having been brought to church by his grandmother as a child. Very interestingly to me, having heard aplenty the then trendy term Anawim in college, Marco referred to himself as God's poor, and he believed that he had every right to make demands of God. He even once told me that Abraham sometimes allowed others to "dip the tip of their fingers in water, and cool my tongue." The context of him telling me this was his explanation of how his visiting a prostitute after work each payday (once a week then) fit into his theological schema. He believed that he was in hell, that his life was hell. He believed that God could thus not send him to hell, because he was already there. God, in Marco's hell, provided him with certain occasional creature comforts, in response to Marco's continued wrestling with God - allowances for Marco's prayers and the good deeds he did in his hell.
Marco had an uncanny ability to win at gambling. Whether at the casinos in Tunica, or at one of the little illegal gambling outfits in Memphis, Marco came back with money more often than not. I sometimes witnessed this, as one of these gambling outfits was in the back of an old gas station that had been turned into a soul food restaurant that Marco, L., and I used to sometimes go to at lunch. Marco would pray before he gambled, insisting, quite loudly and with much profanity, that God give him a winning that day. One time I was particularly caught by a phrase Marco used - he insisted that God not treat him like his [earthly] father had treated him, that God be good to him. A few weeks later in one of our metal shearing conversations I asked him about that. In an unusually sober conversation, he told me of his early childhood, from birth until the age of 5 or 6, when his father died. His father did unspeakable things to him, burnings, cuttings, beatings. With tears in his eyes he told me that his grandmother had taught him to pray to get through those "episodes." In the logic of the world I come from I angrily wondered why the hell she didn't call child protective services. But whatever the logic or illogic, Marco, in a very unorthodox but I suppose very common manner, became a man of prayer. My wife was hospitalized while pregnant with our firstborn, she had a very high fever and was in the hospital for over a week, hallucinating and in and out of consciousness at times. When Marco told me he would pray for her he was one of the few folks who told me as much whom I actually believed. I can only imagine the monologue (or dialogue, who am I to say?) that those prayers consisted of.
Marco was a bit odd looking, but he was not an unattractive fellow, quite muscular and in good shape, and there were women who from time to time expressed interest in him. It was something of a surprise then that he lived with a girlfriend who was very, very heavy (450+ pounds I would guess). She had a lot of health problems and Marco would miss work from time to time to take her to the doctor. He had been with her for many years. I asked him about their relationship once and he told me that he had "let her down" some years ago and would not do it again. Years ago my first intellectual mentor and I were talking about the movie Schindler's List. My mentor noted that the figure of Oskar Schindler in the movie, despite all of those things which Evangelical Christians would consider great moral faults, had a peculiar righteousness to him, an Old Testament sort of righteousness, as my mentor put it. I sometimes think of Marco in that way. His is a world of a great deal of darkness, all under a harsh veil. But I have encountered few hearts that had the warmth of Marco's heart. I will remember his tears and think of the little boy praying the prayers his grandmother taught him, demanding that God not treat him as his father did, demanding with appeal to the rights that God, in His calling a fucked up world still good, forever gives to His Anawim.
Marco got fired after threatening the production manager, whom he never got along with, right in front of the parent company's owner and lead salesman. His cousin Mq told me that Marco did a stint in the pokey after getting caught selling pot (which reminded me immediately of Marco's grandiose explanation of his full proof plan for not ever getting caught - his steady income has always been from selling pot), but is now back home again, playing video games in the morning and "working" in the afternoons and evenings. May God protect him.
Perhaps of everyone still there I am most glad to see R. again. R. is the oldest and wisest of the coppersmiths. R., in his mid 50s, was the "surprise baby" of parents who were in their late 40s when they had him. His parents were sharecroppers in northeast Arkansas, and the story of R.'s life is the story of a Johnny Cash who didn't make it big. He had been in Arkansas rock bands from his teens until just a few years ago. For a decade before he became a coppersmith R. worked with his wife at her dad's gas station in rural Arkansas. One time, just as they were locking up, a robber tried to grab the money bag and when she would not give it up the robber grabbed R.'s wife and held a gun to her head. R. always carried a handgun with him. He had gone around back to get the car, heard the screaming, and ran back out front. His wife yelled at R. to "shoot the son of the bitch" even as that SOB was holding a gun to her head, her still refusing to let go of the cash. R. pulled out his gun, and the robber turned his gun from R.'s wife to R. Both exchanged shots, nobody was hit, and the police caught the robber on foot a few miles away in a field. R. says his hands were shaking when he was firing the gun, which is very difficult for me to imagine, as he has the most steady hands I have ever seen.
His hands are a marvel, I wish there were some way I could inconspicuously take a photograph of them, but then again I sometimes think there are too pure a thing to photograph. R.'s hands and fingers are permanently swollen and deeply cracked from years of heat and flux. I have never seen any other hands like them. The crevices of the many cracks are little canyons, with a sediment of lead and copper dust which can never be fully washed away. Scorched earth in place of skin. R. has a strength in his hands which is truly astounding, he can press out dents in spun metal by hand that are simply impossible for anyone else, and there is no rusty nut he cannot remove by hand. There is an aesthetic quality to his hands which evokes both great strength and a wornness and tiredness that is, simply, beautiful. The hands are the icon of the man. He is never late, always there, day after day, decade after decade, in unbearable heat and the irritatingly humid cold of Memphis winters. Until a few years ago when I pressed him to do it he never used a fan at work. R. was my primary partner and teacher in most of my years there, and I consider it one of the great privileges of my life to know him. He never wastes time at work, he never says anything he does not mean, and is one of the only men I have spent a lot of time with in life of whom I can say I have never seen him even slightly kiss the ass of a superior. With R. you get what you get. And what you get is probably one of the last purely honest working men this country has left.
There is N., who started just a few months after I did, and is now the only coppersmith under the age of 40 left in the shop, which may be why he is the supervisor of the coppersmith department, as he is the only one with the energy to do it (he is also an extremely gifted metalworker). N. is north Mississippi redneck and in the first conversation I had with N., he showed me the photo of his two sons. I asked if they were twins. No. 7 months apart. He then explained that while the mother of his firstborn was 7 months pregnant he, uh, reconnected with an old girlfriend, noting "I was the asshole."
When N. was 15 his brother just barely caught him as he was walking with his step-dad's loaded .45 headed toward the living room to off his step-dad and himself. His brother wrestled the gun away from him. N. was selling cocaine in his late teens and early 20s, but started to settle down when the babies came. The mother of the first born forgave him and they eventually married, but after putting his fist through several walls and a door they split up and divorced, which was the state of things when I was laid off. Since then they have gotten back together but have not remarried. N. is convinced that the relationship works best when they are not married. I don't have the heart to tell him that in the eyes of God they still are, but I know J., his wife, well enough to know that she believes that. Today N. gave me half of his sports drink when he saw that I was too hot. I thought in that moment, there is very little of each other's lives that we do not know.
S. is the shop mechanic. I wrote of him here when I noted:
The lead mechanic in my shop is a man by the name of S. He has been deaf, completely so, since the age of two. When an engine or a moving part of one of our machines, say a lathe, a milling machine, a grinder, or a drill press begins to have a problem, S., who has been working on these machines for over a quarter of a century, will rest his hand on the machine as it runs or struggles to run. Time and time again, he will tell the person standing next to him, often enough me, what the machine sounds like. He has never heard any sound from any of these machines. He only knows what others have described to him as those sounds caused by certain problems, and he can diagnose those problems, with a near 100% accuracy, simply by feeling the vibrations the machine is making. He knows these old machines (most of which predate WWII and several of which predate WWI) through his touch, and his touch provides a far more accurate knowledge than the hearing or sight of anyone else in the shop, even those who have been there decades as well.
S., a lifelong Cooper-Young neighborhood resident, spent his school days in the Memphis City Schools. He once told me that the first time anyone ever sat with him at lunch was during his junior year of high school. He has always been a bit of a loner and delightfully curmudgeonly. Watching him get upset and cuss is quite something to behold. S. has three kids, two of whom have worked at the shop, one of them for a number of years, and I have come to know the family pretty well. Both daughters have struggled with drug issues, and the son, the youngest, who is a brilliant kid, now supplies one of Memphis' elite high schools (they have a rich great aunt) with pot. He makes straight A's but the school is threatening to kick him out if he can't pass a drug test before the end of summer. Daughter K. used to come over and help clean our house after my wife had babies. Her life, by her own admission, is something akin to that depicted on the BBC series Skins. S. has shown me how to fix what I know how to fix of my truck and house, and has been something of a staple of my time in Memphis. We have gone to a number of jobsites together over the years as even though he reads lips perfectly well - the sort of folks who buy our lights (or the folks who run their households) are often uncomfortable being around a deaf guy, especially a deaf guy who doesn't give a damn about their feelings. Last week bossman, S., and I went to another metal shop to look at a riveter my shop was thinking about buying. Bossman "translated" as S. asked his questions. I noted again the inquisitiveness and latent knowledge in S.'s hands as he touched and caressed the old Chicago riveter. I think of S. as being in the image of the comic book superhero. He has this obvious woundedness, but this amazing power in his hands, this sense of touch that is almost superhuman. But to look at him is to look at loneliness. And as S. gets older he seems to fall further within himself. I hope that there is peace for him there.
At my shop there are and have been many more stories like these - this is all I have time for at the moment. In light of my recent thoughts on America I offer these stories, for whatever they are worth. This land is your land, this land is my land. When I think of the America I love, I think of stories like these, and places like my shop.
I have no idea why God brought me back there for another season. I'm going to nursing school, which in theory will take me away from this world forever. I cringe somewhat at the thought of that. Who will pray Marco's prayers for me then?
I think that I have a simple appetite with regard to living a human life, or I like to think so anyway. At the shop the images of life tend to portray brutality or mercy. There is not so much in between. There is the requisite human posturing and affectedness, but in the metalshop world all of that is so worn on the sleeve and so often ridiculously overpronounced; there isn't the sardonic nuance or social sophistication one finds in less rough environs. I was thinking about this after reading this post by Fr. Jonathan. I think it is possible to have a Christianity without those who are materially rich, in a given time under given circumstances. But I do not think it possible to have a Christianity without those who are materially (or mentally as Fr. Jonathan would point out) poor. This is not to equate material poverty with the greater good of spiritual poverty. It is only to say that in the midst of the stuff of earth, the wine, wheat, water, oil, earth, metal, paint, wood, bone, flesh, and glass through which God saves us, the material poor are a leaven of sorts, an image of a reality that the Church cannot be far removed from and still remain the Church.
Despite years, here in Memphis and elsewhere, of living and working with the poor, and being pretty poor myself at times, I still fall into the usual blindnesses. Today I was purchasing bottles of water for the shop and while loading the cases into the back of bossman's truck a man walked up carrying a trashbag. He did not look particularly tough but I was so busy being on my guard that I forgot to offer him some water, on this very hot day. When I came to my senses I took off down the street trying to find him, but he was gone. I did find another disheveled fellow sitting in the shade to give water to, but inevitably the one that got away will be the angel I will have to answer to on judgment day. Maybe Marco will be there to plead my case, profanely daring God to not treat me like Marco's father treated him. Maybe. Though it seems, when it comes down to it, that mercy is brutal.
13 July 2010
the bread of death.
I was thinking about this of late, probably because of a Biotechnology course I took this past Spring. I took it because the Biotech program (funded by local Biotech firms) has by far the best lab on campus, and as one who has long been highly suspicious of GMOs I wanted to learn more about the science behind them. The instructor was great and the class was very informative.
Having now learned a wee bit about the science behind GMOs and the use of such things as recombinant dna and polymerase chain reaction techniques in agriculture, which are now being supplemented by what we might see as even more "aggressive" biotechnologies focusing on such things as peptide manipulation, I've been thinking about Communion.
For Catholics the Code of Canon law 924 §2 states:
The bread must be wheaten only, and recently made, so that there is no danger of corruption.
In 2004 the RCC declared a wheat allergy afflicted girl's first communion invalid because a gluten free wafer was used. Currently, the RCC allows for low-gluten wheat wafers (in which the gluten content is reduced in processing and not via protein manipulation which alters the wheat plant itself). This article notes a Catholic priest who argues that if gluten-free wafers are unacceptable according to RC canon law, then GM wheat wafers should also be:
"This raises questions whether it is lawful to use GM wheat as matter for the Eucharist. If, notwithstanding a pressing health need, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith refused to sanction gluten-free hosts as valid matter for the Eucharist because a protein has been extracted from the wheat, how can it sanction genetically-engineered wheat which has an added protein designed to make it resistant to a weed killer?"
The article (written in 2008) then notes that Monsanto has shelved a Round-Up Ready wheat seed, but as you can see from this article, Monsanto restarted its Round-Up Ready wheat program in 2009.
Orthodox Holy Tradition requires that prosphora be made of only white flour, water, salt and yeast. I have long wondered about our use of white flour today. What passes for white flour today is quite different from the white flour of 950 A.D. For one thing, bleached white flour seems to me to stretch the purity restrictions our Tradition employs. But that said, bleached white flour is still wheat flour.
In my Biotech class we studied some of the recent British experiments with genetically modified baker's yeast. It is only a matter of time.
Despite grumblings and an increased public awareness of the evils of Monsanto, I see no reason why Round-Up Ready wheat will not take over the market with a lightning speed akin to what was seen with Round-Up Ready corn. It is very conceivable that in 10 years the vast majority of wheat on the market will be made from GMOs.
I think the argument presented above concerning GMO wheat and RCC canon law is correct. If a protein cannot be taken away, then it would seem a protein cannot be added. I like the logic here. Wheat is wheat, and when protein manipulation occurs, you have something other than wheat. While there are very few places left on earth where Orthodox parishes eat bread that is made from wheat grown by the local community, at the very least we can share with the Apostles a Communion bread which was not genetically manipulated in a laboratory.
But, of course, this raises a host of other questions. Once GMO wheat takes over the market, going to the store and getting a non-GMO, unbleached white baking wheat flour is going to cost a lot more than it does today. I suppose even the poorest Orthodox parishes could still afford it, but nonetheless there is something disheartening in having to go to an upscale store or the upscale aisle at your local grocery in order to purchase something which is natural and relatively unmolested. As we see in so many arenas in the late modern American life, what was once a good quotidian human act or experience shared by the many is now only kept for the rich. One pays top dollar today to eat the sorts of foods once eaten by peasants - a simple stew with a couple ounces of pasture fed beef and organic vegetables and grains which have been processed in a traditional manner might cost you $60 at the right place. Purchasing the requisite items at Whole Foods might still cost you $20. Thus unless you are a person of means, you either grow/raise the food yourself or you eat laboratory foods.
All of this brings me back to my central question. The RCC went so far as to say that non-gluten wheat cannot be consecrated, and this would seem to require the view that GMO wheat could not be consecrated either. Whilst Orthodox to not tend to take as didactic and judicious an approach to such things, Orthodox do have a long tradition of being very serious and rather insistent about Communion bread. Would a GMO wheat flour used in prosphora render that prosphora such that it would not be blessed by the Holy Spirit to become the Body and Blood of Christ? I suppose there are plenty of persons who might think that rice flour could be used in a pinch, or anything one could make a bread from. But one can find many Orthodox throughout the Church's history who were quite insistent about the purity of the prosphora flour.
I am not sure where I stand on the issue. I will be a bit put off when Orthodox bishops who give awards to fervently pro-death politicians start speaking against GMO wheat in Communion because speaking against GMO foods of all sorts is trendy and the introduction of GMO wheat into the market will give them an opportunity to yet again parade their "commitments" to trendy (yet ultimately meaningless when one is a huge carbon footprint jet setter who is the companion of the rich and famous) environmental causes. I suppose the best case scenario for American Orthodox would be a monastery which grows non GMO wheat and processes it in house, selling its product to churches. But even then, that monastic farm would have to be a good number of miles from the nearest farm growing Monsanto frankenwheat, in order to prevent cross-pollination and the lawsuit from Monsanto that follows when you are growing frankenwheat you did not pay for, even if you only have it because of cross-pollination and you don't use Round Up (Monsanto sometimes wins and sometimes loses these cases, but the fact is that a monastery could not afford to fight Monsanto in the courts).
"We ought to have the right to let people know what is and is not in our milk."[47]
12 July 2010
This is a real political commercial. It is not intended as a joke. Seriously, I looked it up. They meant to put this on TV in support of Wamp.
Not only did her parents name her Coty Wamp, but her dad made her wear an orange bra around her neck for one of his political commercials. That poor child.
Seeing a 53 year old CCM aristocrat with the haircut of a 20 year old tell us that Zach Wamp is a man of deep faith (with ritually perfected Evangelical Christian / religious salesman inflected voice) is almost enough to entice me to go vote for whoever is running against this Wamp fellow.
If TN politics isn't enough to convince you that having Christians in the public square is not all it was cut out to be in that decade you read First Things, I don't know what is. It seems the choices are almost always a vacuous anti-Christianity in the public square, or a vacuous plastic-Christ Christianity in the public square. If this Wamp is Christianity in the public square, who can blame anyone for going with ardent public square secularism?
But these are trivial concerns. More important questions - Does Dave Ramsey have eyes? Do the micro-financing for Jesus zombies generally lack eyes? Do Michael W. Smith's eyes always match the color of his shirt?
11 July 2010
10 July 2010
09 July 2010
thank the OCA for a crock of SWOT
Address relevant contemporary and moral concerns
Challenge our young people with hands on doing – thru Christ they can change the world
Provide social institution & networking opportunities to build an ‘Orthodox community’
Place a focus on family formation – church school can only do so much
Page 24 -
Define the ‘Ministries of the Church’ and maintain a ‘Ministries Handbook’
Because, you know, when I think of the problems within the OCA, I think, "what those folks need is a handbook." This bullet point, more than any other, brings us to the heart of the issue. I was reminded when reading this of Arturo's recent observation, related to certain movements within the RCC. He writes:
Any tradition that you read in a book is not a tradition. Tradition is passed down through life, not learning. The entire Bugninian project of the liturgy was an attempt to create a tradition by the book. Even if it sought to reintroduce certain ceremonies or accoutrements into the liturgy that had died out several centuries earlier, all it did was create novelty with the thin veneer of antiquity. All of this has nothing to do with tradition. Once a tradition is dead, it’s dead. Otherwise, you are just playacting.
Now, anyone who has read Arturo knows that by "not learning" he is not espousing any anti-intellectualism. He is simply stating that you cannot through creating various intellectual apparatuses (publishing houses, seminaries, new media outlets, conferences, official public statements & encyclicals on relevant contemporary issues, ecumenical dialogues, handbooks, etc., etc.) create a Tradition or even a "return" to a more "authentic" form of Tradition. Tradition is either present and alive, or it is not. If you are looking for Tradition and you are in a place where it is not, you might should leave and go to a place where it is if you want to find it. An attempt to create or recreate Tradition among the dry bones in scorched fields is akin to trying to raise the dead without Christ. You might succeed on some level, but what would be raised would be clean looking zombies raised by the power of demons. Arturo has written at length in recent months on the very modern desire to "solve" each and every problem (intellectual, moral, administrative, etc.) by way of unrestrained systematic codification and organizational streamlining.
It seems to me that one problem with this is that it does not work in the long term, and even in the short term "works" only in the sense that it generates energy and short-term confidences which bring up numbers and enthusiasms for a season. I am reminded of Catherine Pickstock's notion of the "impossibility of liturgy." There is, in Orthodox Tradition, something which we might call the "impossibility of ecclesiology." So we encounter some very old Orthodox hierarchical problems, and these need to be dealt with. Unfortunately, the current rote response is to respond to these problems with very contemporary, late modern answers. I fear that the effect will be a Church administration which becomes as sterile as Liturgies which adopt late modern, corporatist forms and language. I understand and appreciate the desire to implement an organizational codification, rhetoric, and psychology which will, presumably, make a +Theodosius/+Herman type situation nearly impossible. The problem is that if it this organizational codification did so work it would likely also make an Archbishop Job of blessed memory an impossibility. When you give a local Church this sort of language and ethos, you are asking for a hierarchy full of company men who repeat the party line on every issue, top to bottom. In these sorts of ecclesial situations, the party line remains relatively vague on those "pressing" theological and moral issues such as proper engagement in ecumenical activities, or contraception, or the proper economia with regard to, say, allowing Anglican priests who have been divorced to become Orthodox priests, but is very, very clear when it comes to how diocesan Evangelism committees are to operate, and how diocesan conferences are to be organized, and how you are to smile and speak while on an evangelism team outing, and exactly how these proposed diocesan banks are to be run, etc.
Fortunately, these organizationalist projects do not work. 5 to 10 years out they don't bring in more people, they don't keep people from leaving, they don't generally result in an administration that is significantly better than what went on before (if that does happen, it happens because of a change in personnel, not a change in organizational handbooks). Those OCA priests who have studied Church Growth at Fuller (or one of its spawn) will protest my statement here, and offer statistics to defend these methods, but one has to make sure not to compare apples to oranges. The OCA is not following and cannot follow the Willow Creek model. It is following something much more akin to a PCUSA or ELCA model. The Mainlines and some of the historic Evangelical denominations all watched the Fuller model "work" with the explosion of certain Church Growth methods in the 80s and 90s. They tried to adopt the same organizational psychology and marketing approaches, and we have seen the results. The OCA will follow the same pattern if it follows this course.
The language of this Working Draft will inevitably become the Orwellian language of the handbook. To the extent that this language and its ethos informs parish life, that parish will almost certainly lack in long term growth. But I suspect there are any number of priests and more than a few bishops who could give a rat's petunia about the handbookization of parish life.
One last thought when it comes to handbooks and the organizing of everything. This was a comment Milton was kind enough to leave on my managerial therapy post:
"...reminds me of the old Methodist preacher in "Elmer Gantry" who was so mystically inclined that he would have forgotten to eat were it not for the care of the ladies in his congregation. When he met Gantry, the latter gave him a businesslike rundown on all his evangelical activities, all the souls he was "winning" for Christ, etc. In short, all the showy, organizational things he was doing. When he wound down, the old Methodist parson looked at him for a moment, and asked in a kindly voice, "Reverend Gantry, why don't you believe in God?"
Page 25-
Cultivate a successor for the Department of External Affairs
Because we can't find anyone else as dedicated to old-school pro-ecumenism as Fr. Leonid Kishkovsky? Surely there is someone they could promote from New Skete. But then again, I suppose it needs to be someone who is a former Anglican and who has been working on the grand 'Anglican' project, as this seems to be the primary external affairs effort other than the Episcopal Assembly. Well actually, the grand Anglican project is the primary eternal affairs effort, because the OCA is ultimately going to do what it is told at the Episcopal Assembly.
Page 27, under Continuing Education -
To develop a better appreciation of the many non- Orthodox cultures in North America
Develop curriculum and associated content
Develop specialists in understanding & communicating these cultures & philosophies
Develop tools to explain Orthodoxy to non- Orthodox
The thought occurs to me that I know of no Christian body anywhere in the world that has the ratio of actual size (number of souls) to number of words committed to Christian education that the OCA does. If we take Fr. Hopko's 30,000 active members number as accurate, then the ratio is 30,000 to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 in the last 30 years.
And am I really supposed to believe that the OCA, within herself, if going to "develop" specialists who understand and can articulate non-Orthodox cultures and philosophies in North America? Methinks of OCA folks like blogger Samn! and Fr. John and Fr. Oliver who are experts in their own areas of expertise. The OCA does not need to develop them. In ten years it may just be that the new media brings OCA faithful to OCA "experts" without any need for the OCA as a national institution to promote "their" experts.
I do not wish to think of what is meant here by tools to explain Orthodoxy to non-Orthodox. I happen to think we need less "tools to explain." Must we mimic every other Christian group with a pathological need to over explain and didacticize, display, and sell everything? I feel a GTKTOesque slideshow with photos of wheat fields and chalices and happy beautiful families coming on, with nice piano background music. The idea that because we are so different we must explain, explain, explain all the more is reactionary and reflects a religious intuition which is ultimately anti-liturgical. There is a place for explanation. Slow and steady. Tortoise beats the hare. Can we imagine an Orthodoxy in the United States which is not heavily into the game of information saturation? Is it possible in this age to show reserve, a hesitance to tell all right away, to assume that there is an iconostasis which stands in front of the truths of our faith? We can have information available for seekers who ask for it or seek and find it, but still have a posture which does not seek to have general education campaigns or in any way push information concerning Orthodox belief and praxis into the religious market.
Last page (30) -
Establish a professional-level development office
All in all, the rhetoric one finds here is, without deviation, the language of a Mainlineish American Christian body that is in decline and committed to steady decline. There is nothing here that has not been tried by the Mainlines, the tone and posture is identical, as will be the result.
I find the language of modern commerce and organizational psychology applied to the function of the Church most unfortunate, but since we are playing that game, well, I'm not a business man, but I am inclined to think that if you are going to thrive within your niche market, you need to stay within the narrow confines of your niche. When the only distinct thing you have to offer is a niche product, and you promote it in the manner that everybody else in the entire market is promoting their non niche products, and you attempt to adopt the same corporate culture that everyone else is adopting, well then why would anyone bother to consume the product you are offering or continue to work for your failing business, other than for reasons of convenience and because of this or that odd quirky reason?
----------------------------------------------------
Lest I get accused, again, of only offering criticism without offering a positive solution, I will offer some of my own suggestions, for what very little they are worth:
- Remove any person who has studied Church Growth at any institution which formally teaches Church Growth from any office within the OCA having to do with evangelism and "development." Also remove any person who admits to have ever read a book on organizational psychology or any self-help book.
- Create a team responsible for evaluating long term financial stability within the OCA as a whole. That team should be comprised of three persons - His Grace, Bishop MICHAEL (Dahulich), Fr. Alexander Atty (yeah, he is not of the OCA, but he knows how to achieve financial stability and everybody trusts him), and as a lay delegate, John from Notes from a Commonplace Book. John has travelled extensively, and is very familiar with the Diocese of the South model which the OCA seems to want to follow with regard to giving and stewardship. These three can issue a report in 6 or 9 months that might actually reflect practices which could work across much of the OCA and would lack the Orwellian blabbering we are getting thus far. More than that, these three people are classic consensus builders. Development and Evangelism are charisms, some people have it, some people don't. Forget about coming up with a uniform 'system' and a handbook. Put people in place who are not long-term ecclesial bureaucrats, who have proven themselves to be competent at the work needed to be done, and who are trustworthy. It is that simple. One worry I have is that we focus too much on building initiatives in American Orthodoxy, and I fear the OCA as a whole is about to head in that direction, following the DOS. What works in some places does not always work in others. Generally speaking, I think that the first financial concern of the OCA should be that her priests are compensated in a manner which keeps them out of poverty, taking pressure off of too many Matushkas who are under intense pressure to provide for their families along with their many other responsibilities. A program is not going to work here. Somehow the Synod needs to figure out how to cultivate a piety which intuits that in most cases it is impious to have a priest who qualifies for food stamps.
- Evangelism - programs for evangelism are pointless. Some people evangelize, some people don't. One fellow who does a whole lot of intentional evangelism thinks he is successful because he has brought 4 or 14 couples into Orthodoxy but does not realize that his used car salesman personality turned another 400 away from the faith. Another fellow thinks he has had nothing to do with anyone's conversion, even though he has turned hundreds of hearts toward Orthodoxy. Evangelism is integrally connected to the virtue of humility. Thus people who think they are good at evangelism are not. The people who write evangelism programs are people who obviously think that they are good at evangelism. Hence we should ignore them. Instead of focusing on evangelism, we need to focus on not having any self-conscious organizational focus.. No mission statements. No vision statements. No "plan" for evangelizing America. If we have to have a motto we should steal Fr. Freeman's "90% of Orthodoxy is just showing up." We should assume that most priests are able to read and that if they care to evangelize-by-numbers they are already familiar with the many Orthodox evangelism tools and literatures to be found from the usual Orthodox sources. The best thing that the OCA can do to promote evangelism is to find out who those priests are that have had the most number of converts who are still Orthodox 5 to 10 years post Chrismation, and stay out of their way. Don't even bother to send young priests to 'learn' evangelism from those priests who have high numbers of committed converts. It won't work. You can't teach evangelism, just as you can teach a person to be the sort of person that attracts other people. Don't get me wrong - you can teach religious salesmanship, just as you can teach a person to sell washing machines. But religious salesmanship results in only short term gains. There is a reason that only 1-2% of those unchurched persons who "get saved" at Billy Graham crusades do not attend church 10 years after "getting saved." If the OCA does not have enough people with the charism of evangelism to sustain itself longterm, then perhaps God has deemed that the OCA need not survive.
- No one should serve on the Met Council for longer than 2 years. Half of the members of the Met Council should be elected by lottery, with each diocese getting their members, etc. The names for the lottery should be offered by priests. As for administrative reform - keep all the books audited, keep all actions of the national church fully transparent.
- Instead of the rather cartoonish adopt a monastic campaign, the OCA could have a disown some monastics campaign, and in order to continue friendly gestures towards the ACNA Anglicans, the OCA could offer them New Skete as a gift. New Skete has on occasion communed Anglicans anyway, so perhaps they wouldn't mind.
- Instead of seminary swapping OCA seminarians with Holy Cross seminarians, perhaps some OCA monks might be sent to the English language ROCOR monastery in Wayne, WVA (which is widely revered by just about everybody). Perhaps some OCA seminarians could be given the option of spending a year there.
08 July 2010



